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   Today, I would like to, in the period allotted, check my time, to discuss a simple question that goes along with some of the things Mr. Herbert Armstrong is saying, but that might not normally be thought of for here in our congregation. This is one of those opportunities to dwell on a particular subject and to fill in some aspects of what is being discussed rather broadly before nations in which Mr. Armstrong presents some fundamental aspects whenever he can.

   I would like to ask the question today: how long has the devil been in rebellion? Or to put it another way, how long has God been tolerating the devil? I'm sure you may have wondered on occasion but never focused in on the number of verses that give us an understanding both of what the devil has been doing with the time perspective, but also what God permits and allows before he takes some kinds of action.

   Let us turn first to a verse in Jude. A number of these verses we're familiar with, what the implications in them are would not always be so apparent, or we sometimes overlook statements. After having brought to the attention of some of the brethren reading or hearing the book of Jude for the first time, he mentions there how he puts them in remembrance of what God had once done and punished the evildoers at the time of the exodus.

   In verse 6, now it says (Jude 1:6), "The angels which kept not their first estate but left their own habitation, he has reserved in chains under darkness to a judgment of the great day." Even as Sodom and Gomorrah??"now we won't go into that. We'll just take one quick look at verse 6. Angels kept not their first estate. The meaning “keep”, the meaning of that word is a, is highly variable and can have several thoughts.

   We use the term "keep" in the sense of preserve. You keep your money, you preserve it in a bank. Adam was told to dress and to keep the garden, that is to maintain it, to preserve it as it is. So the implication is that the angels didn't keep, preserve, protect their first estate, but they left their habitation. Now, we often have read it as if it was just one thought that after they had it, they abandoned it. But, Jude is pointing out that there are two things: the first thing is they didn't keep what they got as their first estate, and second, they left that habitation and now reap a consequence.

   Now it says "their first estate," which implies that they were going to have another. And Mr. Armstrong is pointing that out very clearly??"the Earth was the beginning of the story. They didn't keep the earth as their first estate, to which others would have been added, and they finally abandoned it. We're going to see how this is expounded in a number of other passages in Scripture.

   First, let's turn to I John and see what we find here. It is significant in I John 3, verse 8 (I John 3:8): "The person or the man who commits sin is of the devil, for the devil sinned from the beginning." He didn't sin from the rebellion or the ascension. He sinned from the beginning. It doesn't say that he sinned at the fall or any such term. John perceives that the devil sinned from the beginning. We haven't defined it, but we clearly have shown what it is not.

   Now first, to sin is to transgress law. I John 3:4. So the devil, in fact, transgressed law and [inaudible] the beginning. This leads us now to the account of where the beginning is, and so we look in Genesis. Very significant account that you all take note that "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." And the earth was without form and void.

   Now the significant thing is that we are told in the book of Job that when God laid the foundation of the earth, which if you please, would be pretty near the beginning of the beginning, the angels were already there, remember? And they shouted for joy. These are verses Mr. Armstrong has himself quoted on a number of occasions.

   So we read not that in the beginning God created angels??"he created them before the beginning. Because the beginning referred to in Genesis has reference to the heavens and the earth, and the angels were there when God laid the foundation of the earth. They were therefore created prior to the founding of the earth. And in the beginning when God made the earth and the heaven, and the angels were to be given this as their estate, they shouted for joy when the foundations were laid.

   But it wasn't long, in our sense of time, when God created the earth, completed what he intended at that time to do??"the foundation is only the beginning, you know??"and then whatever else was essential as God made the earth at that time, it appears from then on, the devil conceived of ideas that he thought he would put to the test because he was now in charge of the earth. He was to carry out the government of God, but he didn't see any reason in his mind why he wasn't as brilliant as God and why he shouldn't supervise the earth as he wanted to. He would do some things to conform, but he was also going to do other things that he had ideas about.

   Well, now turn to the nature of those ideas in John chapter 8. John seems to have perceived this significantly. In verse 44, chapter 8 (John 8:44), he said, "Jesus, you are of your father, the devil, the lusts of your father you will do." So there was lust involved, that is coveting what was not his. Now it's defined for men as coveting your neighbor's wife, your neighbor's house, your neighbor's donkey, and whatever else is your neighbor's. Lust in this sense is to covet what is not rightfully one's own.

   And it says further, "He was a murderer from the beginning." Now we know that he sinned from the beginning, and now we're told he's a murderer from the beginning. And the beginning is defined as the time when heaven and earth is created, when the angels are already there, but now being given a first estate which they were asked to keep and preserve and to execute the government of God as expressed through the natural world, and I take it among each other, there would have been peace and harmony.

   "He abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him." That's a sad thing today. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own, for he's a liar and the father of it. So the devil lusts, he's a murderer, and since there is no truth, he's also a liar. All these are aspects of sin, and they all commence at the beginning.

   We now may perceive that when the devil saw what the estate was that he would have responsibility for, he let conceive in his mind an idea that he knew equally well or better than God how the world should be run and cared for. Let's then notice the contrast, slightly before this time, that is the beginning, we have a statement which you have all been aware of, but I'm just repeating it here: "You were perfect," Ezekiel 28:15, "in your ways from the days that you were created till iniquity was found in you."

   So from the days that he was created, which preceded the beginning when heaven and earth was made, he was perfect. And at a certain time, iniquity, that is sin, was found in him. And the character of the man whom he possessed here in Tyre, the king of Tyre, illustrates the kind of world that is the devil's. "By the multitude of your merchandise," this king of Tyre, verse 12??"and Tyre had a king, you know??""you fill the midst of you with violence, and you've sinned."

   The midst of Tyre was filled with violence as a result of the concepts of the king of Tyre, and the one who possessed or influenced the king of Tyre, who was the invisible spirit king, was the devil, and he produces also a world of violence. The physical king was corrupted by his wisdom. The devil had corrupted himself in like manner by the wisdom he had to figure out ideas that he thought were superior to God's.

   Now, we must understand what it means to be perfect in your ways. That is, as far as he was conducting himself, there was no sin until the time he let it enter his mind. And he made a decision to let it enter. Now, whereas human beings are born in ignorance, are reared in ignorance, and die in ignorance in general, the angels were created with wisdom and reason and beauty and talent. He was full of wisdom, perfect in beauty, the sum total of everything that you might conceive of in a created being, last part of verse 12, same chapter.

   And he was in Eden, the garden of God. He was an anointed cherub, so we know that we are dealing with an angelic creature where transgression is involved, and uh, this creature manifested himself on occasion either possessing or directly influencing a king of the city of Tyre on the coast of Lebanon.

   How can a being who has this wisdom sin? I think the answer is very simple. Who was the wisest man of whom we have a record in the Old Testament? It was Solomon, wasn't he? The wisest man, as far as we know in the Bible, had the largest number of wives, probably multiplied horses like nobody ever had for purposes of war and faith. Solomon in all his wisdom transgressed. It was he, after the temple of God was built, who built on the hill of offense idolatrous temples for his wives who led him astray.

   Wisdom is the ability, you see, to make right decisions on the basis of the information that you have which is sufficient to enable you to see consequences of your decisions. But if you have wisdom, that is no proof you're going to use it. And this is what's overlooked. Solomon had wisdom, but he did not at all times decide to use it.

   The devil let enter his mind??"he had the capacity to reason??"he let enter his mind an idea that God's law was not the best way, that he would figure out something better. Now he knew what God's law would produce: peace, joy, harmony, patience, kindness, hope, and all those aspects referred to sometimes in the Old, most often in the New Testament. But he realized, he reasoned, that much more could be accomplished through competition instead of cooperation, that you would be stimulated to do more than ever. And this stimulation, this competition, coveting, protecting because somebody else is coveting, would create greater ideas and greater advancements. The product was violence. The law of God is truth.

   And since he abandoned the law, he introduced the lie. Now the idea is that you really have to think up a story when you lie. The truth is simple??"all you have to do is tell what happened. But a lie is challenging, and it demands that you try to ferret out the lie, see. It's, it's far more creative in his mind to lie and to try to get ahead of somebody else to lie. And then he tries to counter it. It stimulates the thought, the reasoning. And this is the devil's philosophy.

   After all, if you look in the business world, you'll find how fundamental it is to good advertising. And you notice I use the word "good," and that's a lie. But that's what they call it. If you tell the truth, you know, most products wouldn't sell. That's bad advertising because you're not making any money, you're not stimulating the economy. That’s why this is the devil's philosophy as applied to the present world. But the product is violence. He's a murderer, that is, he introduced something into the world where the intent was to exterminate to the advantage of the survivor.

   Now we're beginning to get a picture of the devil's world versus God's. Now if you want to know what God's world shall be like, we can turn to a number of passages in the Bible. Let's turn to Isaiah briefly, chapter 65, and we'll work backward here to more fundamental verses, but we'll start with this.

   In chapter 65: "The wolf and the lamb shall feed together." What a stupid lamb! "The lion shall eat straw like the bullock. The dust will be the serpent's food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain." Now we talk about these things, but I doubt that we have reflected on what it means when we say that we are announcing the kingdom of God.

   In announcing the kingdom of God, the world, the physical world, the product of the government of God as reflected in the biology of the world, will produce wolves and lambs feeding together without devouring each other, lions and bullocks or calves, and the serpent no longer devouring the mice and the frogs and other snakes, just subsisting on the rootlets and the dust. And they won't be hurting or destroying. Therefore, the hurting or destroying is not characteristic of the government of God and therefore it is characteristic of the devil, and if you hurt and destroy, the intent is murder.

   So when the world is designed so that the wolf eats the lamb and the lion pounces on the bullock, and the serpent devours the frog and the mouse and the bird, the canary??"all of this is an aspect of the spirit of murder, in the spirit of murder.

   Now the law addressed to man, "You shall do no murder," which was uh mentioned, is not in reference to whether man has the responsibility to kill the lamb for food. Man is placed at a level above all the animals. He's not on the level of the rest of the animal world. He was given jurisdiction above them and has the right to multiply and the right to kill animals. That's very clear in the scripture, and there's no statement even pertaining to a period of time after the return of Christ in Ezekiel chapter 40 and all that indicates otherwise. God gives life and he takes it.

   But within the animal world, God did not set up a system for wolves devouring lambs. But we have it now, how did it happen? And it reflects the spirit of murder because the kingdom of God isn't going to be like this. Isaiah chapter 11 gives another illustration. Verses 6, 7, 8, and 9, I think would be very good: "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the kid." This is the goat. "The calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear will feed, their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox." What a world!

   "The nursing child"??"this doesn't mean on the bottle??""shall play at the hole of the asps," the poisonous snake. "The weaned child shall put his hand in the cockatrice den" and play with the little snakes. "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain" or government, "for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."

   That is a remarkable picture, but we never really reflect on what it means. If this is the world when the government of God, the holy mountain??"the mountain is the symbol of the kingdom, remember the stone that struck the image in Daniel chapter 4, uh, in Daniel chapter 2, uh, that stone became a mountain and filled the whole earth??"if God's government is like this, then we have to conclude that the government of God is not now operating in the natural world in terms of biology. I want you to get that clearly: the government of God is not now operating in the natural world in terms of biology.

   God created these creatures, but they are governed by a form of instinct contrary to the intent of the law of God, as manifested in this scripture and again in Isaiah 65:25. We therefore discover that the biological world around us and everything related to it, whether birds in the air, the eagle that devours the chick, the fish that devour one another in the sea, wherever you look, the whole biological world is therefore governed by the government of the devil and not the government of God.

   God wanted these things created, and they were created in the Garden of Eden, let's say when man was on earth. Well at the time, you know, when Creation Week is recorded Genesis 1 and another account in Genesis 2, they were created with the same picture that we have here. Adam didn't run and hide when the wolf came or the leopard or the lion, and neither did the other little creatures scatter. But God brought them there, and then Adam gave names.

   Now we can't say that all this happened in the world today merely because woman hadn't yet come on the scene. Because when the woman came, it was still this kind of world. But only later, but for fruit that was not rightfully hers, and when Adam permitted it, knowing what God's government is, the woman temporarily forgetting, being deceived, the world entered into transgression. And Satan once more got control of the government over this world because Adam surrendered to it.

   And so we read in Genesis very clearly without any question that a curse came on the surface. Verse 14, chapter 3, Genesis (Genesis 3:14): "Because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle and above every beast in the field." Hmmm, We've read this as if just the serpent were cursed and all the rest live a normal life. It doesn't say that. It says you are cursed above everything else. The implication is more than, but they also. It doesn't say you are cursed, and nothing else, but you're cursed even above all cattle and above every beast in the field.

   Now, the physical serpent was especially cursed because the physical serpent apparently was used by the spirit, the devil. That he got possession of that creature, and so the physical snake, you see, is actually on its belly, whereas all the others still walk on their legs. In this creature apparently it was not like that at the beginning. And the devil got into that creature and deceived the woman, and through the woman displaced the man who was to head the creation and execute the government of God, and that is to see that the whole animal world was subject to the government of God??"the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, the fish of the sea. Everything was put under man.

   Then what happened, of course, is that a curse came on the biological world. That's exactly what that verse says there in verse 14, chapter 3. Not only on the serpent, but more on the serpent than on any other single creature. And from that time on, the world from Adam's day till now has been subject to devouring, eating one another, the spirit of murder, coveting the territory of another animal, you know, there's the territoriality in the whole of the biological world. All of these things came because the devil entered in.

   And God brought a curse on the world by letting the devil again continue his control because Adam was not found fit to displace him. For a number of days, God had reasoned with Adam and explained to him and taught him as well as his wife. And the devil was forbidden, to enter Eve. And then a day came, and the test was there and Adam failed. And the devil now had every right to continue his government because God had not found yet a replacement whom he would put in his place.

   I want to turn briefly to Isaiah chapter 14. The final king of Babylon in whom I personified the spirit Lucifer or Hale, the light bringer in Hebrew??"Lucifer is Latin. The end result is that the world is made a wilderness, and the cities are destroyed, verse 17 (Isaiah 14:17). I want to point this one up because once the devil's government gets started, this is a characteristic of the environment and in human society, there is a destruction of cities through warfare or internal strife in the various subdivisions that make up our pressure cookers that we call cities in our society. And in the biological world, the natural world around us, we have the same product of destruction and not peace.

   Now, Romans??"Paul's letter to the Romans tells us something again about this world. Chapter 8, verses 22, 23 (Romans 8:22-23): "We know that the whole creation," of which we have any visible information, "groans and travails in pain together until now," and this is not exclusively the human family. It includes the whole creation, therefore the whole biological world. "And not only it, the creation, but ourselves also which have the firstfruits, we ourselves groan within ourselves waiting for the adoption, that is the redemption of our body," that is also the manifestation of the sons of God that is discussed a little bit earlier.

   "The sufferings of the present time aren't worthy to be compared with the glory yet to be revealed," verse 18. "The expectation of the creature" or creation "waits for the manifestation of the sons of God," verse 19, chapter 8 (Romans 8:18-19). You see, the government of God will be restored by the sons of God, those who were born into the kingdom of God, who have let the law of God rule in their life. And in the meantime, human beings given charge over the world are being influenced by the spirits who are actually in control of the whole world and in fact affect the person of competition and strife and nature with man copies??"we examine nature ourselves today and we try to pattern society after the way much of the animal world behaves. Darwin, one of the most brilliant men of the last century, came up with a wonderful idea that the biological world, the survival of the fittest is the way human beings ought to live, and nation, great nation??"France, the United States, Germany, Italy, Russia, Holland and Belgium. All these great nations adopted Darwin's philosophy in the last century, Israelites and Gentiles alike.

   And they produced the 1st World War. The fittest survive is the philosophy. And the reason, but in a biological world, why shouldn't we have a situation in which the fit survive and destroy the one? That improved the way of philosophy, see. It overlooks the question of divine healing and forgiveness and all the other provisions that God would have made.

   Now God allowed it in the days of Adam on. "The creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly but by reason of God who subjected the whole thing to this state of affairs in hope." The creature itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption??"and here the reference of creature is to the family of man??"into the glorious liberty of the children of God. From the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the children of God, and even the biological world around us will be delivered from the instinct that it's governed by today and will be governed by an entirely new set of principles.

   Of necessity, it is obvious that if you're going to change the food habits of the animal world, you must also change the reproductive habits. So that instead of the mice, instead of the rabbits multiplying to feed the snakes and the coyotes, there has to be a whole new structure set up in which reproduction and food habits, the digestive system with traits of character, if you want to call it that, characteristics in the animal's brain that govern instinct, so the lion can drink at the same hole that the zebra does when there's no hunger, but when the lion gets hungry, then every zebra has to beware. All these things have to be changed.

   And that means that the government of God, you see, is going to be extended into every area of nature. Whereas the angels now are in charge, the world of which we speak, says the book of Hebrews, will not be in subjection to angels. The implication is that the world in which we now live is in such subjection. You're familiar with this verse, I'm sure. We'll turn to the book of Hebrews here: "For unto the angels has he not put in subjection the world to come whereof we speak," which implies that the world that is now is in subjection to the angels.

   They once had an estate. They didn't keep it properly. They finally abandoned it and were cast down. Someone was created to replace them??"Adam??"he failed, and they now again were able to take over possession without manifestation of the physical world. And it does appear that indeed God allowed man to be visually in charge, and angels manifest themselves only with permission. Today evil angels try to influence the biological world which man has charge over by influencing, you see, the mind of man in terms of what we do with our environment.

   Now when we see this, we also learn something else. It's the devil's world in terms of biology that is around us. The full balance of nature that we think is marvelous and wonderful??"this is a remarkable world in the sense that the reproduction cycles of creatures are all out of whack. And in order to solve that you have to have these other animals devour them. That's the kind of world that is love and peace and harmony. That's the world of fear. It's a world that is in fact motivated by the spirit of murder that you like to see one creature pounce on another. All this is the devil's world governed in opposition to the government of God.

   Now what we want to do is just roll back history, so to speak. On the weekend of the 4th of July, the night of the 2nd, Saturday night, I took my family, excluding my wife, into the Grand Canyon. We climbed down Sunday and climbed out Monday. It took us 3 hours to get down, roughly speaking. And the climb out was a little more variable. The man did it in 5 hours, 150 minutes. That was a pretty good time. Go with around 6 hours and 5 minutes, and I came up later.

   Now, it was joyful and it was a real experience, and it in a sense impressed one of the magnitude of the world before Adam which the angels had charge also. And the fact that if you were to examine the geological record, you would discover that the present world of creatures multiplying out of hand, devouring one another, feeding on each other, competing for each other??"a world of wilderness, a world in which the desert does not bloom as a rose, excuse me, and in which the mountains are practically useless??"all this goes back long before there was man.

   In fact, there is no time in which geologists have found life, and which paleontologists have examined life, there is no time, brethren, in which the biological world is not in competition and devouring. And this indicates what Jesus said that in the beginning, and he created the heavens and the earth, iniquity was found in the devil. The devil is a liar, a murderer from the beginning. He's a sinner from the beginning. He's a transgressor.

   And when God gave the plan as to what would happen on the earth and what would be created from period to period, the devil, instead of executing those plans in accordance with God's will, gave a twist and a turn here and there. And the instinct that was to govern the way animal behavior should be was set not according to the law of love and concern that a spirit should have for the biological world. It was set, as any of us know, on the basis of devouring competition, a chain of life in which one thing lives on another and not cooperates with another.

   God, the world as we already have found in Isaiah, put that out as what he wished, and he gave the angels the responsibility and apparently the devil got the idea that he could improve. And little by little he got more and more angels to go along with it until one-third became convinced to the point that after the immense time that can be measured radiometric dating from the Archaeozoic, the Paleozoic, the Mesozoic, and the parts of the Cenozoic till recent times??"and the word "Recent" with a capital R as a geological term??"more and more, the angels, for one-third, went with executing things the devil's way and two-thirds of the angels only stayed loyal.

   But the devil, once Helel or Lucifer was in charge, and his will ultimately dominated the characteristic of the world. And geology, I think, and paleontology from this point of view are important not insofar as we describe shells, skeleton deposits, but they are important insofar as they reflect the nature of the devil's government.

   And finally there would be a function when the whole thing was to be abandoned and they were going to try to displace God so they could carry out their ideas elsewhere in the universe without his interference. And it all ended right there. So that is it seemed to have ended because the devil was smart enough to get at Adam and to prevent Adams success, and the devil got possession again, but now human beings are the fundamental dominant creation. He's got to work through human beings through leadership. And that's what he has done.

   And he does it in the biological world that God has allowed, where he was allowed to restore his government, and he does it through the social world and civilization by inspiring leaders in the social, religious, the political realm, the military, to convey the same philosophy in constructing government and our society as a whole. And if you please, even concepts pertaining to the family.

   God in the meantime sent forth his Son to make provision to pay the penalty of those who he is asking now to qualify first. And also to assist in the conveyance of a message. And then he conveyed to the world a picture of what it will be like when the government of God is here. And it is so different from the world around us, and we're going to have such a great change in our perspective of nature that I think that what we will see in the world tomorrow is the government of God will even astound us. Because we often see it only as it manifests itself directly to us in hearing or a church directive or just taking care of children or the elderly, and we don't see it in terms of the application of the government of God to the whole of creation.

   I appreciate being here. My wife is here and our two younger children who haven't met them. I certainly would be happy for you to do so. The two older ones no longer live with us that are in Pasadena, and I'd be happy if I have not met some of you to become acquainted.

Sermon Date: July 16, 1977